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The National Agricultural Library (NAL), the North Carolina State University(NCSU) Libraries, and the NCSU Computing Center are collaborating on a research and demonstration project to identify and investigate issues involved in a networked, computer‐based document delivery system for library materials. The project uses scanned images of documents to generate highly detailed, machine‐readable page images, and transmits those images through the data transmission capabilities of the NSFnet/Internet to computers located in libraries, in research areas, and on scholars' desks at agricultural research stations and extension offices throughout the United States. By using commercial, graphics‐capable, networked hardware platforms combined with commercial and public domain software, a non‐proprietary, computer‐based document delivery system should be within the reach of the land grant library community by the mid‐1990s.

The NCSU Digitized Document Transmission Project is a collaborative project between North Carolina State University Libraries, the National Agricultural Library and eleven land grant university libraries. The aim of the project is to explore the basic issues and questions involved in developing network‐based document delivery systems for library materials. NCSU Libraries, in partnership with the National Agricultural Library (NAL), is leading the research and demonstration project that is investigating the technical, procedural and administrative issues related to the electronic delivery of digitized research materials via the NSF net/Internet and campus telecommunications networks. Commercially available graphics‐capable, networked desktop computers, scanners and laser printers have been installed in participating institutions' interlibrary loan departments for the direct transmission and receipt of digitized materials. The system allows the digitized research materials to be transmitted directly to the researcher's workstation, whereupon the image can be readily imported into a graphics or wordprocessing program or an ASCII file can be created using an optical character recognition (OCR) program. Printed images are markedly superior to fax transmissions. A distinguishing feature of the system is its ability to import and deliver materials originating in electronic form, such as electronic journal articles or multimedia works.